The University of Arizona Press
Date: Friday, April 3, 2026
Time: 7 p.m., MST
Place: University of Arizona Poetry Center, 1508 East Helen Street, Tucson, AZ
The University of Arizona Poetry Center hosts “Sacred Spaces of Indigenous Poetry: In-Na-Po 2026 Second Night Reading,” featuring Retreat Fellows and Poets Kimberly Blaeser and Laura Tohe on April 3. Blaeser recently won the National Book Foundation’s Science + Literature Award, and Tohe serves as the Arizona Poet Laureate.
Founded in 2020, In-Na-Po is a national Indigenous poetry community committed to mentoring emerging writers, nurturing the growth of Indigenous poetic practices, and raising the visibility of all Native Writers past, present, and future. They will host their fifth annual week-long retreat for emerging Native poets at the Amerind Museum in Dragoon, AZ, and at the University of Arizona Poetry Center. The event is free and open to the public.
This reading is presented in partnership with the University of Arizona Office of Native American Advancement and Tribal Engagement and with the Amerind Museum, an academic research center, museum, art gallery, historic property, scenic destination, and community gathering place in Dragoon Arizona, dedicated to work that explores both Native American history and contemporary life.
About Ancient Light by Kimberly Blaeser:
Elegiac and powerful, Ancient Light uses lyric, narrative, and concrete poems to give voice to some of the most pressing ecological and social issues of our time.
With vision and resilience, Kimberly Blaeser’s poetry layers together past, present, and futures. Against a backdrop of pandemic loss and injustice, MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women), hidden graves at Native American boarding schools, and destructive environmental practices, Blaeser’s innovative poems trace pathways of kinship, healing, and renewal. They celebrate the solace of natural spaces through sense-laden geo-poetry and picto-poems. With an Anishinaabe sensibility, her words and images invoke an ancient belonging and voice the deep relatedness she experiences in her familiar watery regions of Minnesota.
About Tséyi’ / Deep in the Rock by Laura Tohe and Stephen Strom:
To visitors it is Canyon de Chelly, a scenic wonder of the Southwest whose vistas reward travelers willing to venture off the beaten track. But to the Diné, it is Tséyi’, “the place deep in the rock,” a site that many have long called home. Now from deep in the heart of the Diné homeland comes an extraordinary book, a sensitive merging of words and images that reflects the sublime spirit of Canyon de Chelly.
Diné poet Laura Tohe draws deeply on her heritage to create lyrical writings that are rooted in the canyon but universal in spirit, while photographer Stephen Strom captures images that reveal the very soul of this ancient place. Tohe’s words take readers on a journey from the canyon rim down sheer sandstone walls to its rich bottomlands; from the memory of Kit Carson’s rifle shots and the forced march of the Navajo people to the longings of modern lovers. Her poems view the land through Diné eyes, blending history, tradition, and personal reflection while remaining grounded in Strom’s delicate yet striking images.
